The question is about kids on purpose because children play games of pretend differently than how adults play D&D. You can be VERY autistic and find D&D to be rewarding because it's not JUST about collaborative imagination.
A test like that can only ever be a first indication. If you score high on this, it doesn't mean you're autistic. It just means you might want to talk to a mental health professional.
Sadly humans always want to boil things down to simple metrics (or maybe we just like numbers... wait a minute!) and people can't be bothered to do the hard part after getting the number. The classic example is IQ tests, which just measure how good you are at that particular quiz (despite certain people obsessing over them like the number is your IRL intelligence stat).
I didn’t take this test, but another similar 50 question autism test, but I felt the same way. It reminds me of alot of the personality quizzes they give for the different business personality trends out there. Questions where there can be some nuance involved and I can answer the question either way depending on how I frame it, but the answers only allow for one answer or the other. I could literally flip a coin to pick the answer and not be wrong, but somehow one answer will make me more autistic than the other?
Criticism of psychology tests aside (which is totally valid), do also note that this one is based on the work of Simon Baron-Cohen, whose theories on autism have been proven wrong one after another and miseducated a generation of psychologists.
Though, I had to put in semi random answers several times because the statements were not applicable. Some examples:
I find social situations easy.
I do find them easy. I just hate them most of the time and try to avoid them.
I would rather go to a library than to a party.
Definitely the library over the party. Though, I'd rather cut myself between the fingers with paper than go to a library. What century is this test from? We have the internet!
I find it hard to make new friends.
Making friends is super easy. Keeping them is what requires effort which I'm not willing to invest most of the time. And I stopped making new friends, not because I couldn't, but because I didn't see the point.
I frequently find that I don’t know how to keep a conversation going.
I frequently find that I don’t want to keep a conversation going.
I don’t usually notice small changes in a situation or a person’s appearance.
Those are two very different things. I notice the tiniest of changes in "social" situations but am ignorant to changes in outer appearance or decoration that many would consider major. It took me like half an hour, after being prompted about a change, to figure out that an entire wall in a room changed from white to red ...
I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face.
Reading emotions is easy. Telepathy/mind reading is proven to not exist.
I am good at social chitchat.
I am. But I hate it and avoid it unless I see a clear benefit from enduring it.
I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.
If anybody thinks they can really imagine what it would be like to be another (existing) person, they are delusional. Even getting a crude approximation right would be mere coincidence.
I can imagine a million fictions of what I could be.
I find it very easy to play games with children that involve pretending.
I assume I'd have no trouble with it if I set my mind to it. But why would I want to?
Fuck that, I'm not autistic! As long as I'm not tested positive, I'm not. I wasn't, and I'm not going to be. I can be an exceptional software engineer with a direct wire to God without being autistic or otherwise crazy. And I'll have no glow-in-the-dark shrink say otherwise!
I got 21 but feel the same as the examples you gave. I’m very good at “putting on a show” when it comes to socialising - I can easily be the life and soul of the party but it is so fucking draining.
There are separate questions for enjoying social chitchat and occasions, and being good at them. So you can agree with being good at them, and disagree with enjoying them.
The phrasing of the questions is why I don't trust it to diagnose me. I wish I could ask a human being giving the test "what does that mean? Like, I think coincidences are neat, but I don't like have them marked on calendars and stuff."
But then, I do have a notation cheat sheet on my phone that lists the names of every order of magnitude between 10^2 (one hundred) to 10^102 (one trestrigintillion), just so I don't have to do any mental math to figure out what something like 10^12 is in word terms (it's one trillion). I realize that is far from a normal people thing to do, but is it autism, ADD, ADHD, Asperger's? I wish I could afford a real diagnosis so I could find a chemical that would make my brain act normal
No it's not, it's 100 billion, one trillion is 10^12. These are simple, it's always a multiple of 3, or -3, makes me wonder why you don't care for small numbers.
32/50. I've undergone an official diagnosis test and it came back negative. Don't put too much stock in this online quiz - it's not a substitute for real doctors.
You put it very well, and I relate to this a lot. I'm definitely different than everyone around me, but it has allowed me to flourish in life and I'm thankful for it.
I think the accuracy of the test depends a lot on whether something comes naturally or whether it's learned. Like the questions about chitchat and meeting new people. I hate social chitchat and I'm pretty indifferent to meeting new people, but when I was dating I learned to be good chitchat and to enjoy meeting people(I had to learn to enjoy meeting people, so I would be interested in what they say, so I could have threads to follow for chitchat). Since then I've forgotten that mostly because I don't really care, but I think the point stands. Would I be less on the spectrum if I've learned to be "more normal"? Would me not giving a fuck make me more autistic?
There were some other points where I've now learned to be better at those things and if I have to answer what would be the correct answer? I can't say I'm not good at them because I've made deliberate effort to be good at those things, but I've had to made deliberate effort because those are things I'm naturally not good at.
Couldn't this just fail for people with other mental health issues? I scored 35 but was only diagnosed with ADHD as a child (and again in my twenties).
Got a diagnosis when I was 17, and was part of an autism support program in college. Fun stuff; having to craft a boring, unoffensive mask for the public sucks.
What's up neurobuddies! I'm posting a daily question from the short version of this test on the lemmy.world autism community. Come and complain about ambiguously worded questions at Let's Play AQ-10.
Just tried it, got 21/42. I'm with you, I've adapted a lot as I've grown up. Still have plenty of weird sensory issues but I've come up with ways to cope or avoid them instead of having them drive me insane
Man. I am weird af but not enough to have been diagnosed with adhd (score "great" on those tests though 🤡). However it seems i am not autistic at all (13/50). I apreciate you guys though, makes life more interesting.
Damn near the same situation here, both on the score and the missus, but I have been diagnosed with ADHD also.
I may be wrong here, I don't have a degree in psychology, nor an MD with a specialty in psychiatry, but an automatically graded 50 question test, with no follow interview, does not seem like a suitable tool for providing a differential diagnosis.
14, But them I'm a little to the extroverted side. I think for a lot of statements, a neurotypical introvert would fall on the same side of the agree/disagree divide as some with autism, but maybe with differing intensities. But, as this is a self reported test, there's no real indicator what differentiates strongly agree from slightly agree.
So, for example: both introverts and autistic people will probably might have difficulties meeting new people. But if you as an introvert compare yourself to extroverts around you, you might say you strongly agree with having problems meeting new people, when you have little problems compared to many autistic people.
Or maybe you're autistic. I'm not a cop.
(And yes, I know that the concept of introverts vs extroverts has some flaws, but it works for this specific situation).
I got 23/50. Frankly, I only took it because my actual diagnosis can have some behavioral overlap with autism, so I'm a little surprised it didn't misdiagnose me like people often do.